Dreams From My Father

My father always promised us that we would live in France. We’d go boating on the Seine and I would learn to dance. I sail my memories of home like boats across the Seine. And watch the Paris sun as it sets in my father’s eyes again.

Judy Collins

Musings on the Yahrzeit of My Father’s Death

Today is my father’s yahrzeit.  Like many Yiddish words, this one conjures up much more than its dictionary definition. The strict definition is the anniversary of the death of a close family member, when we Jews customarily light a memorial candle and recite the mourners’ prayer. But the word is also redolent with the thoughts and feelings that are stirred up as we pay our respects to our departed loved ones.

This year, as in all years that have passed since my father died when I was eighteen, I got teary-eyed as I lit the candle of remembrance. Nothing new there—I always choke up when I recall how I would dance with my feet on his shoes, how he called me “Jackie” after our First Lady, and how I could shamelessly wrap him around my pinky when I wanted something from him.

But this time, my thoughts went to a new place. This time, I thought about the lessons he taught me—not so much the parental directives I received pretty much as Law from Sinai, but rather the lessons I learned from his life experience and how subconsciously it impacted mine.

One of my favorite stories about my father is how he recognized the danger of the Nazi invasion of Poland and led an escape into Russia which saved our family from total extinction. As I wrote in my blog, Finding Rivkah, he was able to save my mother and their children along with my mom’s baby sister, Sheindel, who was visiting with them at the time. His own sister, Rivkah, perished as a result of her decision to return home to her parents.

[I must be particularly tuned into this period in my family’s history because of a project I’m working on for the Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles. I’ve been asked to write the stories of the members of Café Europa, a support group for Holocaust survivors, to accompany Barbara Mack’s amazing photographs. We have high hopes the exhibit will travel to museums around the country. I am praying that I do the stories justice.]

My father’s wartime experience taught me the importance of vigilance and even more so—the importance of taking bold action when that is what’s required. I’d like to think his daughter learned these lessons well. I am certainly not a physically gutsy person. I don’t swim or ride a bike and am quick to complain if I think my husband is driving our car too fast. However, I don’t shrink from taking a bold step to advance a cause I believe in. Indeed, the act of writing my first book, Changing Lanes, took a boldness I think I got from my dad.

I learned another important lesson from my father just a year before he died. He walked into my room while I was reading the Communist Manifesto as an assignment from a government class at Barnard. He became so enraged that he grabbed the book and threw it clear across the room. “Is this what I’m paying all that money for that college to teach you?” he yelled. I protested in my naiveté, “But Dad, this stuff is great—‘Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains’—you should read it.” That’s when he stung me with the lesson of his greater experience. “I lived under Stalin, young lady. Don’t tell me what to think about it.”

Well, forty plus years later, I’m still an unrepentant liberal. But I learned not to take overblown rhetoric at face value. I learned to seek out the facts and consider that there’s probably a story behind the story we’re being told. I’m not a total cynic, but thanks to my Dad, I’m no sucker either.

Now that I’m over sixty, I am on a quest along with many of my baby boomer peers to answer the question: Why am I here and what should I do with my life? Often, I think about my Dad who lived only to be fifty three. Along with inheriting his strong brows and nose, I am a beneficiary of his life experience. It’s that gift which helps me answer the foundational question: Where am I from? I believe my family history played a vital role in determining the person that I am.

And the person I want to be.

You too might want to share a story from your family history that informs your life decisions to this day. We and our readers would love to hear from you.

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